Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a smart meter; in particular to a smart meter capable of transmitting data by wireless transmission or wired transmission.
Description of the Related Art
Due to the global energy shortage, many countries have implemented control mechanisms for inefficient energy use. For example, the Smart Grid has increased the efficiency of energy use. In a Smart Grid infrastructure, each country's electric companies are required to install a special device that transmits meter information in every household, business, and industrial space, lowering the cost of gathering said information compared to more traditional ways of using manpower to do so. However, the installation of these special devices increases costs for the electric companies, and furthermore the transmission of meter information must usually be performed at specific times, causing an inefficiency of use during the downtime of these devices. This translates to high hardware investment costs for the electric companies.
Also, due to the widespread use of smartphones, every cellphone is able to use 3G/4G cellular networks to download information anytime and anywhere. Most users use cellphones to download indoors, but if the user is in a blind spot marked by a weak signal, this may cause the cellphone to not be able to download information, or to download at a very slow rate. Also, if a high number of users are in the same building using the same network to download, this may also cause weak and slow signals, causing a temporary bandwidth shortage.